Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a vehicle seat control system disposed in a vehicle and can change a seat arrangement.
Related Art
There are technologies by which the seat arrangement, including the positions and facing directions, of plural seats installed in an automobile can be changed to various seat arrangements.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open (JP-A) No. 2001-347859 discloses a vehicle seat equipped with a seat device, a long slide device that moves the seat device between a driver's seat position and a rear seat position, seat height changing means for changing, in the driver's seat position, the seat device to a lower position than in the same occupant seat position, and a lift-up device that moves the seat device outside the cabin in a rear seat position. Because of this, in the technology disclosed in JP-A No. 2001-347859, the seat device can be moved into and out of the vehicle via a door opening for the rear seat where the steering wheel does not get in the way.
Furthermore, in recent years, a variety of technologies relating to autonomous driving have been proposed. Technologies have also been announced by which the seat arrangement can be changed to a face-to-face seat arrangement in which, in the autonomous driving mode, the seat in which the driver sits faces the opposite direction (rearward direction) of the vehicle traveling direction such that the driver faces an occupant in a seat on the vehicle rear side.
However, in an autonomous vehicle whose seat arrangement can be changed to a face-to-face seat arrangement, when the seat in which the driver sits is rotated to face the vehicle traveling direction when the vehicle is switched from the autonomous driving mode to the manual driving mode, the driver needs time to redirect his/her mental faculties and adjust his/her sense of physical orientation before becoming accustomed to the behavior of the vehicle and the scenery. For that reason, it is not always the case that the occupant seated in the driver's seat is suitable to be the driver when the vehicle is switched to the manual driving mode.